ABSTRACT
In light of the existing pandemic that has hit the world, we have decided to add this chapter to our book that accommodates it. It was not part of our original proposal, as at that time, COVID-19 was unheard of and the unprecedented changes brought about by the virus had not yet struck the world. There is an ongoing response to the pandemic by the scientific community in their attempts to find a treatment and/or a vaccine to fight the outbreak. Science journals have commissioned special editions addressing the virus and have waived open-access publishing fees for this research (see for example Frontiers, 2020), and the World Health Organization (WHO) has established a database of scientific research and publications on COVID-19 (WHO, 2020). The nascent response of the scientific community will also need to be backed by a similar reaction from the social sciences and the humanities (some of these disciplines are included within the remit of Frontiers). Explorations will need to be undertaken by academics into the social and individual experiences and consequences of the virus and how we can first best survive the outbreak and then in the future recover from it, both as individuals, families, social groups and societies. In this chapter we therefore speculate upon the consequences of the pandemic in terms of its impact upon the types of healthcare research that need to be undertaken. We suggest that the use of online resources and procedures offer a safe and appropriate means of gathering information about the virus, its consequences, and wider health and well-being issues. We specifically discuss procedures such as netnography, keeping diaries, visual ethnography, online focus groups, online interviews and the analysis of metaphors. The ethicality and good practice associated with these forms of research in this setting is also considered.
